Global Fund reacted quickly to provide support and flexibilities to countries affected by COVID-19

Contents

1. NEWS

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Global Fund has modified its calendar for countries’ submission of funding requests for the 2020-2022 allocations, in order to help countries submit their concept notes as soon as they are ready. The Fund has also taken measures to enable countries to reallocate savings from grants or to reprogram small proportions of their grants to mitigate the effects of COVID-19. Regular updates and guidance notes are posted on a dedicated COVID-19 page on the Global Fund’s website, as well as resources for countries to keep up the fight against the pandemics of HIV, TB and malaria.

2. NEWS

While developed and developing countries around the world struggle to cope with the shocking rapidity and scale of COVID-19’s spread, the Global Fund and other major global donors are rallying to support countries' efforts, both medical and economic, to cope. The Global Fund is enabling up to $500-million within the current portfolio for reprogramming, the World Health Organization is gaining traction with its Solidarity Fund, and the World Bank Group has announced a $12-billion financing package for countries. The G20 has made broad commitments to protect lives and help “all countries in need of assistance” – what this means concretely is not yet clear.

3. COMMENTARY

Conversations happening now to develop mitigation plans for COVID-19 address the most urgent medical and prevention measures to prevent the further spread of the epidemic within countries. Nevertheless, lessons from Ebola show that the fight against COVID-19 will produce many additional economic, cultural and social challenges that need to be addressed by a series of actors, among which civil society organisations play a key role.

4. ANALYSIS

As even well-resourced developed countries struggle to manage their COVID-19 epidemics, Africa’s growing COVID-19 caseload threatens to overwhelm Africa’s already fragile and under-resourced health systems. Critical-care beds are one measure of a country’s preparedness – but many African countries’ number of these beds are in the single digits.

5. NEWS

The Office of the Inspector General’s first country audit of Lesotho found that controls to ensure access to quality services including prevention activities were ‘partially effective’ but that program oversight and governance ‘need significant improvement’. The OIG noted in particular the lack of country ownership of HIV and TB programs, undermining the sustainability of programs, a lack of coordination and linkages from HIV demand-creation prevention activities to essential HIV services, and bottlenecks in TB case finding.

6. NEWS

The Office of the Inspector General conducted for the first time an audit of the Geneva Global Health Campus’s management processes. The audit rated the Global Health Campus project’s management of key risks as ‘effective’, while rating the overall management process as ‘partially effective’. The Global Health Campus has been home to the Global Fund, Unitaid, Stop TB and the RBM Partnership since March 2018. The Global Health Campus ‘project’ was designed to facilitate shared cost savings across the organizations, and to enhance operational collaboration between the global health partners.

7. NEWS

On March 24, World TB Day, the World Health Organization released new consolidated guidelines on preventive treatment for tuberculosis, a day and an event largely eclipsed by COVID-19-related news. The new TB guidelines are designed to help countries accelerate their efforts to provide this treatment, in order to stop people who are carrying the TB bacteria from becoming sick with the disease. Activists note that the COVID-19 battle is – or should be – also a fight against the ongoing pandemics of HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria.

8. NEWS

In 2014, PEPFAR adopted its new strategy, titled PEPFAR 3.0 - Controlling the Epidemic: Delivering on the Promise of an AIDS-Free Generation, designed to step up its efforts to optimize its investments. The HIV testing strategies now target geographical areas and populations for a better “yield” and higher positivity rates. This article presents an analysis of how the targeted testing strategy was rolled out in Côte d’Ivoire, between 2014 and 2018, in a context where PEPFAR uses its Country Operational Plans (COPs) to adjust its strategic directions annually.

1. NEWS

Author:

Christelle Boulanger

1 Apr 2020

New funding request dates include 3 additional application windows

As early as 4 March 2020, the Global Fund published on its website its first guidance note on responding to COVID-19, in which it acknowledged the serious threat that this epidemic poses, particularly for the most vulnerable countries. As a major player in global health, and a provider of large grants aimed at strengthening the health systems of implementing countries, the Global Fund identified the following funding priorities: protection of health workers, communication to affected populations, maintenance of essential services, supply-chain coordination, rapid stock replenishment, disinfection of equipment and waste management.

Countries were then invited to assess the availability of their unearmarked funding to quickly reallocate funds to the supply of consumables and equipment needed to respond to COVID-19. In the event of 100% grant absorption, the Global Fund will approve rapid reprogramming of up to 5% of the total grant for the following activities:

So far, according to the Fund’s most recent COVID-19 situation report, released on 31 March, 31 countries and 2 regional grants have made use of these reallocations, amounting to a total of $25 million in reprogrammed funds.

The two regional grants are the ALCO HIV/AIDS prevention project in West Africa, which covers border screening and passenger tracing in five countries along the Abidjan-Lagos corridor, and the Middle East Response, ensuring continuity of treatment and essential services for people affected by HIV, TB and malaria in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon.

The Global Fund’s COVID-19 situation report on 31 March said that most countries have requested the use of less than the 5% permitted from their existing grants, that most funds approved have come from savings from existing grants, and that at least 12 additional requests are in process.

In addition, in this year of funding renewal, many voices have been raised in warning that the country dialogue and proposal development processes would be disrupted by the COVID-19 crisis. In the African constituency’s statement to the Strategy Committee, which was held virtually on 26 and 27 March, the constituency formally requested that flexibility measures be proposed to countries. These included the mobilization of the epidemic control authorities and the various cross-cutting divisions (drugs, laboratory) in the preparation of contingency plans, and the urgent repatriation of all consultants who supported Country Coordinating Mechanisms (CCMs) in the preparation of requests, to their countries of origin.

After intense discussions that included constituencies, Board members and Technical Review Panel members, the Committee’s decision was finalized on Tuesday 31 March: new submission windows have been added to the three that were originally defined, to give countries additional opportunities to submit their applications as soon as they are ready. The application windows are now set as:

In addition, it is clear that all Global Fund country teams have shown understanding and flexibility in their working with implementing countries since the first applications from countries were received on 23 March, for example in giving CCMs additional days to answer questions and improve their submissions.